The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-07-15 Reply Admin

Blue rolling Beaver:
+ Text white on black - Ok, very much so - Dynamic 1st page w/ jumping colors - No no, please not. - Fixed Top Bar eating about 10% of my 16:9 screen - No way! What's wrong with side bars in this (rotten) age of wide screens? O Top para of Articles in 1st page - well, ok, if you must.
Please remember to inform and not entertain that much.

Widescreens are only useful for

Turn vertical
Ignore the observers comments
Read documents and code without scrolling
profit.

I understand that we have two eyes and therefore have the misconception that we have a larger viewing horizontally.

The eyes are used to focus on one spot and give depth perception to a single spot.
The actual visual field is more like the old ratios. There is a lot of horizontal overlap in the eyes.
We don't see things outside of a small radius in the center of our vision. Widescreens require horizontal panning. This is good for hiding information that we don't always need, like the sidebar, or comparing two different sets of information by splitscreen.

So, other than that above, the concept of widescreen is very flawed. Which makes it really funny to go a theater with widescreen and be forced to sit in the very back so you can view the entire screen simultaneously.

duh · 2014-07-15 Reply Admin

Valued Service:
Blue rolling Beaver:
- Fixed Top Bar eating about 10% of my 16:9 screen - No way! What's wrong with side bars in this (rotten) age of wide screens?

Widescreens are only useful for

Turn vertical

Have you tried this on a laptop? It makes typing a little difficult. And as for the desktop monitors many of us can afford, too many don't have a vertical swivel arm.

I liked working on a NeWS workstation with its portrait-aspect monitor as much as everyone else, but today's manufacturers don't seem to agree.

The problem is that even with windows not being sized to the full width of the screen, many -- if not most -- environments have less vertical than horizontal screen real estate to spare. As a result, any fixed-content horizontal bars should use as little vertical space as possible; more than 40px or so and you're wasting space.

Addendum (2014-07-15 12:18): (FWIW, the TDWTF proposed navbar is fine to me personally, though it does feel a bit large. Any larger than it is now, and I'd probably be complaining too... it's riding the edge of bloat-sized.)

2014-07-15 Reply Admin

Current site works perfectly on my android tablet, new site is horrendous with a menu taking up half the sodding screen! Ffs allow us to hide the menu or optionally keep the current layout, or I,m off. Thanks for asking for feedback

dxider · 2014-07-15 Reply Admin

It looks great, but please, let "Random Article" link intact.

2014-07-15 Reply Admin

I look at this and ugh...I think the real WTF is the new design. No just...just no.

2014-07-15 Reply Admin

My only request is that something be done about oversize code/quote blocks on mobile devices.

For quotes, wrapping should be fine. For code blocks, inner-box scrolling would be preferred.

I like the new design. Thedailywtf is one of my goto websites when I'm bored, on my mobile 99% of the time. As such, I appreciate a design that takes such devices into account.

2014-07-15 Reply Admin

pbean:
Since this is basically a blog, one might wonder why build something custom, and not go for something off the shelve such as Wordpress (or any other such blogging software)? It comes with everything you want and need out of the box, and then you can tweak it a little bit after the fact.
Seems like the #1 (or maybe even #0) WTF of all developers is the NIH (not invented here) syndrome. Building stuff yourself instead of re-using already existing software and/or libraries.

I remember usenet readers allowed threads of flamewars of truly epic proportions. It seems that "modern" design is intentionally created to hobble efficient communication. This, presumably, solves the social problems of dealing with flamewarriors, stalkers, crackers, hackers, & smackers.
Having said that, I'll also say: of course the author of the site wants to roll his own. I re-invented many wheels in my career for various reasons. Sometimes I wanted to learn. Sometimes it was faster. Sometimes I had to get around a kludge with another kludge.

2014-07-15 Reply Admin

Anon:
TRWTF is fixed width web sites. There is no valid excuse for fixed width.

+1

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

Valued Service:
About the only thing that is document based is articles, and even they are starting to rely heavily on streaming video or app based navigation of articles.

That doesn't mean the internet isn't becoming shittier. Remember that time when almost every site was flash-based? Yeah... that.

anon:
I agree this site could use a little facelift, but this just looks like some over-designed, generic Web 2.0 site.

I must agree with this person. The current "old" site may look 2007, but it has much more personality and frankly, it looks mature. The new one looks like the ravings of an acknowledgement-hungry fresh graduated graphic designer.

veggen:
Holy crap! That comment quoted in the article... that's mine!

I was almost sure it was mine, it definitely looked like something I would say. Can I be your friend?

trtrwtf:
a toddler:
No, it's not nearly obnoxious enough. Maybe add some animated fireworks or dancing animals? Couldn't hurt to include some sound effects; I'm thinking ahooga horn for hovering on articles.

I like the pre-nostalgic effect. In a few months, we'll be coming to this to remember what the early 2010s were like in web design.

To reflect the soon-to-be-dated styling, I suggest adding some blink tags and a bit of comic sans. And maybe a little bit of table layout, and maybe an applet or two. We can have all your nostalgia needs met in one go.

If you can find one, maybe an "under construction" logo - that would be awesome. Total vintage.

Now, for the real site, can we have a real design?

You guys are forgetting marquee, animated GIFs and looping MIDI music. No respectable website is complete without that.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

Also, if I'm not respondent #5577, I'm sure I said something very much like that.

Allow me to change my mind. The old site looks professional, generally mature, and to the point. It works fine. It may look a bit 2007 but only if you're into visual design. This site is not about bleeding-edge graphic design trends, it's a code blog. We don't want it to look hip for the sake of looking hip, we don't want it to look modern for the sake of looking modern.

The current site will still be fine ten years from now, because it's not about the visuals. The new one will look like a horribly outdated fad in two years.

chubertdev · 2014-07-16 Reply Admin

I'm glad that the mouseover colors on the article text tested well with seven year olds.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

The side menu to too large. The content is too small. The colour change on mouse over on the content is quite horrible.

Viewing an article is worse. Half the screen is taken up with non-content.

I want to read the wtf. I don't want to have a title shouted at me or look at nice picture of whoever submitted it.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

duh:
I liked working on a NeWS workstation with its portrait-aspect monitor as much as everyone else,

What did you do when you wanted to open two windows? Put them side by side with around 30 characters visible in each line? Put one above the other?

None of my co-workers liked a portrait monitor. If someone had wanted it, I'd have traded with them instantly. I just assumed my boss had issued that one to me as part of his bullying.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

Why is CodeSOD and Error'd emphasized as special categories worthy of their own Menu Items, yet other categories are not? And why is there not a menu item that lets us browse the categories?

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

You say "I've grown weary of the current look, the poor readability, .."

I say "I haven't. I'd be weary of a change that you believe is better but I don't".

That is all :)

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

I like the new logo.

I don't like the fixed width layout. On my screen, I have 500 pixels to both sides. Let me have text in that space.
Dear lord, that mouseover effect.
"
```
6/2/2014
```
"? Seriously? Just use ISO 8601. Better yet, spell out the month name. This isn't paper: we have space for that. This isn't a multilingual environment: everybody here knows what "February 6th" means. This isn't a Commodore 64: you can definitely afford the bytes to spell out the month.
While you're at it, get rid of the time. I don't really care if an article was posted at "6:15 AM". 6:15 AM where? Either your people are up at weird times of the day, or your code finds out what timezone I'm in and then adds/subtracts from the actual post time. In any case, it isn't useful information. Besides, this site only posts 1-2 articles a day, the time doesn't really matter at all.
Floating top menus suck. I know what site I'm on. If I want to use some menu, I'll scroll up. If I want to click something at the top of my screen, I don't want your menu activating by itself and flashing large boxes of colour for fractions of a second.

The main feeling I got when looking at the new site was CLUTTER. Heaps of stuff in a tiny space. Move your mouse around and colours change radically and huge things pop up, then disappear just as fast.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

Clyde:
- "
6/2/2014
"? Seriously? Just use ISO 8601. Better yet, spell out the month name. This isn't paper: we have space for that. This isn't a multilingual environment: everybody here knows what "February 6th" means.

I agree mostly, but don't understand that last bit. This isn't a multilingual environment: everybody here knows what "6th of February" means. It's almost, but not quite, five months before 4th of July.

Clyde:
- While you're at it, get rid of the time. I don't really care if an article was posted at "6:15 AM". 6:15 AM where?

6th of February where? It's 7th of February by the time I get to see it.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

The first time I tried to post a comment in this thread, I wrote about the colour changing on mouseover and said it looked like the [censored]<[/censored]blink[censored]>[/censored] tag had broken.

The site threw an error. I tried about 5 more times. Well, as the error page said, if the error recurs then report it in the contact page.

I tried to report the error in the contact page.

The site threw an error. Well, as the error page said, if the error occurs in the contact page then send e-mail to Alex P. I sent him e-mail.

There's been no answer, but I figured it out. The site threw errors because I wrote a syntactically valid form of the blink tag instead of the censored form that I'm writing this time. The contact page did the same.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

The new version looks amazing.

However, if you don't start using a monospace font for the code sections I will incite a riot.

2014-07-17 Reply Admin

6th of February where? It's 7th of February by the time I get to see it.

If only there was one time that everything could be synchronized to. A... universal time, if you will.

Okay, good point there. The day doesn't even matter. What the date is useful for is when you're clicking Random Article you can see just how old whatever you're reading is.

(Greetings to Australia.)

2014-07-17 Reply Admin

TIL I'm basically male.

2014-07-17 Reply Admin

Clyde:
6th of February where? It's 7th of February by the time I get to see it.
If only there was one time that everything could be synchronized to. A... universal time, if you will.

Remember the JPL guys who had to shift their waking and working hours each day so they could keep coordinated with Curiosity?

Clyde:
Okay, good point there. The day doesn't even matter. What the date is useful for is when you're clicking Random Article you can see just how old whatever you're reading is.

That's for sure. I made sure to check how old my date was. Silvio B. forgot to do that.

2014-07-18 Reply Admin

So, you killed the previous, readable comment design, and replaced it with crap, in an effort to improve readability?

2014-07-22 Reply Admin

I might be late to the party but I'll add:

I think it looks good - as in, going in the right direction. I actually prefer the low-density design trend. Keep in mind I'm 28 and female. I like the concept of having bolder headers to lead me to the stuff I want to read and not bombarding my screen with a flat wall of text.

However I do agree on a couple points:

The mouseover color change is awful. If you want a hover indicator like that, at least do something very low-contrast (like from white to light gray).
I do think the colors are too bold/bright/contrasty. It's not BAD color choice... it's just not my thing. I prefer blues/greys/neutrals. But then maybe it's still just the mouseover effects that are making it so bad because so much of my screen turns bright red.
The hover/zoom/embiggening animation you have on the "Submit your WTF" button is just bad. Animations are too 90s to me.

But a BIG positive for me is the article view: It's so much more readable. I do like the format. I like the grey de-emphasized style for the code blocks. It's definitely a huge improvement.

So basically my biggest complaints are the colors and animations. Other than that I really like the bones of the layout.

2014-07-22 Reply Admin

Oh I also wanted to respond to the remarks about the comments section: I also like the new comments, at least the font and such. But I don't like having to hit an expansion button to see replies. I would prefer the normal forum style, straight linear display. Or if you have to indent the replies, at least default to be expanded.

Also, when I clicked on an article to view it, I did not see a link or anyway to go from the article to the comments? It might exist, but then if the point is I didn't see it without digging for it, I think you've done something wrong.

2014-07-22 Reply Admin

Lauren:
Oh I also wanted to respond to the remarks about the comments section: I also like the new comments, at least the font and such. But I don't like having to hit an expansion button to see replies. I would prefer the normal forum style, straight linear display. Or if you have to indent the replies, at least default to be expanded.

Replies are shown in 2 different places - once normally, further down in the straight linear display, and once in that expandable reply section.

Lauren:
Also, when I clicked on an article to view it, I did not see a link or anyway to go from the article to the comments? It might exist, but then if the point is I didn't see it without digging for it, I think you've done something wrong.

It's next to the "Similar Articles" section, above the HUMONGOUS page footer which you probably scrolled all the way down to when you were looking for the comments link.

2014-08-14 Reply Admin

And 3.6% are male trolls.

2022-06-20